The invention relates generally to wireless radio systems. The invention also relates to push-to-talk radio systems which may be retrofitted with equipment to interface with multiple frequency band, multiple channel radio systems using a retransmission bridge. Further, the invention relates to a software defined radio crossbanding and retransmission service.
Stovepipe Legacy radios and Legacy wireless networks are conventionally difficult to upgrade to support new services or interoperate with other network systems. Conventionally, human operators at a new service site may be used to intervene to proxy for Legacy users to support new services. Switching/interconnection equipment may be used to support crossbanding or retransmission services between these different systems, but are either limited to predefined communication planning or require manual human operator intervention at the switching/interconnection equipment site(s).
Prior to the advent of multichannel software defined radios, voice and serial data retransmission services required the interconnection of two radios via physical cabling and the manual coordination of the radio modes and settings.
Accordingly, there is a need to easily and inexpensively allow stovepiped Legacy radio systems or other systems to support new services or interoperate with other systems without using predefined crossbanding/retransmission communication planning or requiring manual operator intervention at the switching/interconnection sites. There is also a need for a crossbanding and retransmission service for a software defined radio that uses application programming interface (API) software objects that support a plurality of crossbanding and retransmission services through inheritance from a common base class.
It would be desirable to provide a system and/or method that provides one or more of these or other advantageous features. Other features and advantages will be made apparent from the present specification. The teachings disclosed extend to those embodiments which fall within the scope of the appended claims, regardless of whether they accomplish one or more of the aforementioned needs.